Introduction
Office Management Application (OfficeMA) is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) that harnesses the power of Web 2.0 to deliver flexibility, interactivity and enhanced user interface. The work on this project has started as part of my MSc Dissertation with University of Reading in 2007.The application is build using Java and the following components: Dojo Toolkit, Hibernate 3.2, Struts 2, Spring 2.0, JSON tags, PostgreSQL database and Tomcat 6 application server.
This page provides a brief summary about my MSc Dissertation. I have tried to close the gaps in the literature and come up with a design methodology that can be used to design and implement Rich Internet Applications.
Dissertation Abstract:
This project is concerned with the design and implementation of a cost effective Rich Internet Application for an office management system that can be used to manage the staff in a small business. This dissertation outlines the shortcomings of using traditional Web design methodologies to design functionality-oriented applications. To overcome these shortcomings the project has devised a comprehensive design and implementation methodology to implement a new generation of Web applications called Rich Internet Applications. This design methodology is largely based on two pillars, one is the traditional and established software design principles outlined in the literature such as Bennett et al. [4], Stone. et al [34] and Shneiderman [32] and the other is the new concept of Web 2.0 [24].
The project uses the Unified Software Development Process, relational database theory and the user interface principles to design the application, and then devises a methodology to implement a dynamic, rich user interface. The project implements the application using the Java programming language and other Web technologies and Open Source frameworks such as JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Hibernate, Spring and Struts 2. This report provides the design, implementation and evaluation of the application and clearly demonstrates that the developed Rich Internet Application has delivered better usability, interactivity and performance compared to traditional Web applications.